Circle Red X - by Scott Cummings

Does anyone remember this story? If so, please let me or Jim know who it was and what all happened. It was around July or August of 69. Another crew chief and I were up in Dong Ha pulling the normal maintenance on a couple of Bird dogs. All that night the base had been taking mortar fire from north of the river (North Viet Nam). The pilots had finished their missions for the day and were over at the Marine Officers Club drinking . As the night went on this pesky little NVA wasn't going to let anybody rest. Just as we were dozing off to sleep a couple of pilots rousted us out of bed and told us to get a plane ready because they were going after the offending troublemaker who was putting a damper on their party.

The only problem was that we didn't have a legally opperable plane to fly. The only one that was ready to go was "circle red X" which meant that it only was approved to fly during the day because I believe the instrument lights were out and maybe something else. Well they took it out anyway and got the job done but told us not to log it in the flight book!

Scott Cummings, Phu Bai is alright!